13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress) Primary Documents in American History 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Thomas Nast. Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-2573 The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation This collection contains congressional publications from 1774 to 1875, including debates, bills, laws, and journals. The text of the 13th Amendment can be found the United States Statutes at Large, volume 13, page 567 (13 Stat.

567) and in volume 13, pages 774-75 (13 Stat. 774). References to debate on the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) can be found in the Congressional Globe on the following dates: March 31, 1864 - Debated in the Senate (S.J. Res. 16). April 7, 1864 - Debated in the Senate. April 8, 1864 - The Senate passed the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) by a vote of 38 to 6. June 14, 1864 - Debated in the House of Representatives. June 15, 1864 - The House of Representatives initially defeated the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) by a vote of 93 in favor, 65 opposed, and 23 not voting, which is less than the two-thirds majority needed to pass a Constitutional Amendment.

December 6, 1864 - Abraham Lincoln's Fourth Annual Message to Congress was printed in the Congressional Globe: "At the last session of Congress a proposed amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, passed the Senate, but failed for lack of the requisite two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives. Although the present is the same Congress, and nearly the same members, and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session." January 6, 1865 - Debated in the House of Representatives (S.J. Res. 16). January 28, 1865 - Debated in the House of Representatives. January 31, 1865 - The House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) by a vote of 119 to 56. February 1, 1865 - President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution submitting the proposed 13th Amendment to the states.

December 18, 1865 - Secretary of State William Seward issued a statement verifying the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. The collection is organized into three "General Correspondence" series which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material. Most of the 20,000 items are from the 1850s through Lincoln's presidential years, 1860-65. A selection of highlights from this collection includes: The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana This collection documents the life of Abraham Lincoln both through writings by and about Lincoln as well as a large body of publications concerning the issues of the times including slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and related topics.

From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 This collection presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. This site allows you to search and view millions of historic American newspaper pages from 1836 to 1922. Search this collection to find newspaper articles about the 13th Amendment. A selection of articles on the 13th Amendment includes: " Freedom Triumphant ," New-York Daily Tribune. (New York, NY), February 1, 1865. " Glory to God! The Constitutional Amendment Passed the House by a Vote of 119 to 56 ," Fremont Journal. (Fremont, OH), February 3, 1865. " The Constitutional Amendment ," The Daily Phoenix. (Columbia, SC), December 14, 1865.

Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (popularly known as the Constitution Annotated) contains legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution, based primarily on Supreme Court case law. This regularly updated resource is especially useful when researching the constitutional implications of a specific issue or topic. It includes a chapter on the 13th Amendment . (PDF, 201 KB) Exhibitions The African-American Mosaic This exhibit marks the publication of The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture. This exhibit is a sampler of the kinds of materials and themes covered by this publication. Includes a section on the abolition movement and the end of slavery. African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship This exhibition showcases the African American collections of the Library of Congress. Displays more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings. Includes a brochure from an exhibit at the Library of Congress to mark the 75th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment .

This exhibition, which commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, explores the events that shaped the civil rights movement, as well as the far-reaching impact the act had on a changing society. The Teachers Page The Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment freed all slaves in the United States. This page links to related primary source documents. External Web Sites The Thirteenth Amendment , National Constitution Center Selected Bibliography Avins, Alfred, comp. The Reconstruction Amendments' Debates: The Legislative History and Contemporary Debates in Congress on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Richmond: Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government, 1967. [ Catalog Record ] Hoemann, George H. What God Hath Wrought: The Embodiment of Freedom in the Thirteenth Amendment. New York: Garland Pub., 1987. [ Catalog Record ] Holzer, Harold, and Sara Vaughn Gabbard, eds. Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.

[ Catalog Record ] Maltz, Earl M. Civil Rights, the Constitution, and Congress, 1863-1869. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1990. [ Catalog Record ] Richards, Leonard L. Who Freed the Slaves?: The Fight Over the Thirteenth Amendment. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. [ Catalog Record ] Tsesis, Alexander, ed. The Promises of Liberty: The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. [ Catalog Record ] -----. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press, 2004. [ Catalog Record ] Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. [ Catalog Record ] Younger Readers National Constitution Center The Thirteenth Amendment By Jamal Greene and Jennifer Mason McAward Slavery is America’s original sin.

Despite the bold commitment to equality in the Declaration of Independence, slavery was legal in all of the thirteen colonies in 1776. By the start of the Civil War, four million people, nearly all of African descent, were held as slaves in 15 southern and border states. Slaves represented one-eighth of the U.S. population in 1860. Many think that slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. However, the Emancipation Proclamation freed only slaves held in the eleven Confederate states that had seceded, and only in the portion of those states not already under Union control. The true abolition of slavery was achieved when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865. The first section of the Amendment declares: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The Amendment is unique in the Constitution because it bars every person from holding slaves or engaging in other forms of involuntary servitude, whereas most constitutional provisions only constrain or regulate the government.

It is unique in another way as well: although the Constitution obliquely acknowledged and accommodated slavery in its original text, the Thirteenth Amendment was the first explicit mention of slavery in the Constitution. The most immediate impact of the Thirteenth Amendment was to end chattel slavery as it was practiced in the southern United States. However, the Amendment also bars “involuntary servitude,” which covers a broader range of labor arrangements where a person is forced to work by the use or threatened use of physical or legal coercion. For example, the Thirteenth Amendment bans peonage, which occurs when a person is compelled to work to pay off a debt. Originally a Spanish practice, peonage was practiced in the New Mexico Territory and spread across the Southern United States after the Civil War. Former slaves and other poor citizens became indebted to merchants and plantation owners for living and working expenses. Unable to repay their debts, they became trapped in a cycle of work-without-pay. The Supreme Court held this practice unconstitutional in 1911. Bailey v. Alabama (1911). Most scholars also assume it would violate the Thirteenth Amendment to order specific performance of a service contract.

An example of this situation would be where an employee has a contract to work for a full year but wants to leave after six months. Forcing the employee to continue to work instead of paying a financial penalty to get out of her contract would almost certainly violate the Thirteenth Amendment. Notably, the Amendment does allow a person convicted of a crime to be forced to work. Thus, prison labor practices, from chain gangs to prison laundries, do not run afoul of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment has also been interpreted to permit the government to require certain forms of public service, presumably extending to military service and jury duty. In addition to the first section’s ban on slavery and involuntary servitude, the second section of the Thirteenth Amendment gives Congress the “power to enforce” that ban by passing “appropriate legislation.” This provision allows Congress to pass laws pertaining to practices that violate the Amendment. For example, the Anti-Peonage Act of 1867 prohibits peonage, and another federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 1592, makes it a crime to take somebody’s passport or other official documents for the purpose of holding her as a slave.

Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment has broader applicability as well. The Supreme Court has long held that this provision also allows Congress to pass laws to eradicate the “badges and incidents of slavery.” The Supreme Court has never defined the full scope of what the badges and incidents of slavery are, and instead has left it to Congress to flesh out a definition. In The Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Court held that racial discrimination in private inns, theaters, and public transportation did not qualify as a badge or incident of slavery. In a series of cases in the 1960s and 1970s, however, the Court held that racial discrimination by private housing developers and private schools is among the badges and incidents of slavery that Congress may outlaw under Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment. Most recently, Congress has determined that Section Two provides a basis for a portion of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (which criminalizes race-based hate crimes) and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (which penalizes human trafficking and protects its survivors). The Supreme Court has yet to evaluate these laws.

Despite its significance in American history, the Thirteenth Amendment is not one of the more frequently invoked parts of our Constitution today. Now that slavery is a part of our past, the Amendment’s current relevance is subject to debate. Does it govern the fairness of modern labor practices? Does it empower Congress to pass broad-ranging civil rights laws? Whatever the outcome of those debates, though, the Thirteenth Amendment deserves recognition as an historic and solemn promise that slavery will never again exist in the United States. Matters of Debate The Thirteenth Amendment and the Constitutional Imagination by Jamal Greene The Thirteenth Amendment and the Constitutional Imagination By Jamal Greene The Thirteenth Amendment is easy to overlook. Section One of the Amendment officially prohibited chattel slavery, but by the end of the Civil War its return was already unthinkable. William Lloyd Garrison, the country’s most famous abolitionist, helped ring in the fighting’s end by attending the flag-raising ceremony at Fort Sumter on the invitation of the Secretary of War: Amendment or not, there was no going back. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits indentured servitude and peonage but does not extend to other forms of involuntary service such as military or jury duty or work by convicted prisoners.

To the extent the Amendment reaches official racial discrimination, it is overshadowed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which seem to go even further. But the Thirteenth Amendment is distinctive and its constitutional potential remains untapped. Most significantly, Section Two of the Amendment empowers Congress to enforce Section One “by appropriate legislation.” This language had never before appeared in a constitutional amendment, but it echoed the famous words of McCulloch v. Maryland , an 1819 decision in which the Supreme Court referred to “appropriate” federal laws in order to signal a broad scope for congressional power. In an unbroken series of cases beginning in 1883, the Supreme Court has understood Section Two to permit Congress “to pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery in the United States.” It is beyond question that this language permits Congress to forbid certain private acts and not just the acts of states. Thus, in an early exercise of Section Two power, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which the Supreme Court has construed as prohibiting racial discrimination in the making and enforcing of contracts and in property transactions, even by private parties.

More recently, Congress has used this authority to prohibit racially-motivated violence. These laws are grounded in the view that slavery was not just the holding of black Americans to unpaid service, but an entire system of social relations designed to enforce a racial hierarchy. Refusing to enforce contracts of blacks, barring them from leasing or owning property, and assaulting them with impunity were—among other abuses—widespread in the states of the Confederacy before, during, and immediately after the Civil War. These practices denied the equal citizenship status, and implicitly the humanity, of African Americans. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Thirteenth Amendment with Jennifer Mason McAward, Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School. Read the full discussion here . The badges and incidents of racial hierarchy persist in the United States, and the Thirteenth Amendment authorizes Congress to address them. The Thirteenth Amendment should permit Congress to redress further issues, including: bidding practices that effectively exclude minority contractors from economic life; admissions policies that exclude minorities from selective colleges and universities; and electoral practices such as voter ID laws and abbreviated voting windows that have the effect of limiting minority political participation.

Significantly, though the Thirteenth Amendment singles out slavery and involuntary servitude, it does not single out race. Accordingly, Section Two also empowers Congress to reach social and economic relationships that are akin to slavery and peonage. Marriage laws once abided and facilitated the economic and physical subordination of women and the denial of women’s individual personhood. The Supreme Court should not, therefore, have invalidated Congress’s attempt in the 1994 Violence Against Women Act to provide a federal remedy for women who are the victims of sexual and other forms of gender-based violence. The Thirteenth Amendment provided ample authority to pass that law. American workers are also protected by the Thirteenth Amendment. Employers who coerce undocumented workers into accepting subsistence wages, who pressure employees not to file worker’s compensation claims, and who rob them of tips and overtime pay, are in direct violation of the Constitution. Congress’s power under the Thirteenth Amendment also should be broadly construed to permit it to require good-faith collective bargaining (which federal labor laws already require) and to mandate that both public and private employees pay union dues (which federal labor laws do not require), thereby permitting such bargaining to survive.

The Thirteenth Amendment has awoken before, inspiring the National Labor Relations Act, anti-peonage laws, fair housing laws, sex trafficking laws, and hate crimes legislation. The Amendment’s true potential is not so much to require judges to invalidate particular practices or even to empower Congress to legislate to protect civil rights. Rather, it is to motivate ordinary Americans to understand the persistence of social caste—whether because of race, gender, or economic situation—as a constitutional injury that should not exist in the United States. Jamal Greene Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Columbia Law School The Thirteenth Amendment: A Constitutional Success Story by Jennifer Mason McAward The Thirteenth Amendment: A Constitutional Success Story By Jennifer Mason McAward The 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was a transformative moment in American history. The first Section’s declaration that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist” had the immediate and powerful effect of abolishing chattel slavery in the southern United States. One year later, Congress used its power to “enforce” the ban on slavery—conveyed by the second Section of the Thirteenth Amendment—to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, our nation’s first civil rights law.

That law invalidated the Black Codes, laws passed by southern states after the Civil War that sought to keep the former slaves effectively tethered to their former plantation owners. For example, one state law required all African Americans to enter into yearlong employment contracts and to agree that they would forfeit the entire year’s wages if they left before the year’s end. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 ended such laws, conveying (among other things) an equal right to enter into and enforce contracts without respect to race. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was very controversial, Congress concluded that the Black Codes imposed de facto slavery and therefore that Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment empowered Congress to pass the Act. Since those early days, however, the Thirteenth Amendment has not been a frequently-invoked part of our constitutional canon. Why is this? Most likely, it is because the purpose of the Amendment has already been fulfilled. Slavery is gone and we have numerous laws in place to prevent and/or punish any form of coerced labor. Some argue that Section One of the Thirteenth Amendment not only abolished slavery, but all of the racially discriminatory practices that accompanied the institution of slavery.

Thus, the argument goes, the Amendment also bans discrimination and promises a full measure of freedom. The problem with this argument is that it in many ways it renders the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments redundant. The Fourteenth Amendment makes all born within the United States, including former slaves, citizens of the United States and promises them both “the privileges and immunities of citizens” and “equal protection of the laws.” The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits denials of the right to vote based on a citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” If the Thirteenth Amendment itself had banned discrimination and mandated a full range of civil and political rights, there would have been no need for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Thus, it is quite understandable that the Supreme Court has suggested that Section One of the Thirteenth Amendment is best understood solely as a ban on coerced labor. The Thirteenth Amendment paved the way for subsequent constitutional promises of equality, but it did not itself provide for that equality. Another Perspective This essay is part of a discussion about the Thirteenth Amendment with Jamal Greene, Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Columbia Law School. Read the full discussion here .

Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment empowers Congress to “enforce” the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude “by appropriate legislation.” According to the Supreme Court, federal laws passed pursuant to this provision can address a broader range of discriminatory conduct than just coerced labor. To enforce the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude, Congress can address not only slavery, but also its “badges and incidents.” Although the Civil Rights Act of 1866 has been upheld as proper Section Two legislation, the Supreme Court struck down an 1875 civil rights law, holding that race discrimination in privately-operated businesses like hotels, theaters, and transportation was not a badge or incident of slavery. Since that time, Congress’s legislative activity pursuant to Section Two has been relatively restrained, particularly with respect to conduct that is not closely connected to coerced labor. Some scholars have argued that Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment provides Congress with an untapped power to pass nationwide civil rights legislation. This argument states that Congress can label a broad range of discriminatory practices as “badges and incidents of slavery” and then address them legislatively.

However, Congress has not actively adopted this theory, and an increasing number of judges and scholars are skeptical that it is correct. They argue that the concept of the badges and incidents of slavery has a limited range of meaning and thus constrains the topics on which Section Two permits Congress to legislate. Moreover, they argue that Congress should legislate only where it finds that there is a close connection between current discrimination and present or future conditions of slavery or involuntary servitude. It likely would be difficult for Congress to satisfy this inquiry. This argument about the scope of Congress’s power under Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment is starting to play out in challenges to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. That Act, among other things, makes race-based hate crimes punishable under federal law. While racially-motivated violence was certainly part and parcel of the American system of chattel slavery in the past, the question is whether that historical connection is sufficient for Section Two purposes, or whether there must also be a link today between racially-motivated violence and present or future conditions of slavery or involuntary servitude.

These questions may ultimately lead the Supreme Court to issue another of its rare opinions on the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment. Jennifer Mason McAward Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School The Thirteenth Amendment: Slavery and the Constitution The Thirteenth Amendment: The Abolition of Slavery The Issue: What is the history behind the 13th Amendment? Is it "self-enacting"? What sorts of private activities might Congress regulate under its enforcement provision? Introduction Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 hotly debated the issue of slavery. George Mason of Virginia argued eloquently against slavery, warning his fellow delegates: "Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, providence punishes national sins by national calamities." Southern delegates, on the other hand, argued strenuously that the new government should not be allowed to interfere with the institution of slavery.

Delegate John Rutledge of South Carolina, for example, told delegates that "religion and humanity have nothing to do with the questions" of whether the Constitution should protect slavery--it was simply a question of property rights. The Constitution that the delegates proposed included several provisions that explicity recognized and protected slavery. Without these provisions, southern delegates would not support the new Constitution--and without the southern states on board, the Constitution had no chance of being ratified. Provisions allowed southern states to count slaves as 3/5 persons for purposes of apportionment in Congress (even though the slaves could not, of course, vote), expressly denied to Congress the power to prohibit importation of new slaves until 1808, and prevented free states from enacting laws protecting fugitive slaves. Slavery, as all students of history know, continued to be a divisive issue up through the Civil War. Southern states worried that the balance in Congress might tip against slavery, and so were anxious to extend slavery to new territories and states.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 (enacted at a time when slave states and non-slave states had equal representation in the Senate) permitted slavery in Missouri, but prohibited slavery in portions of the Louisiana purchase north of 36°30'. The Supreme Court, in its infamous decision in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), ruled that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in its territories. In so doing, Scott v Sandford invited slave owners to pour into the territories and pass pro-slavery constitutions. The decision made the Civil War inevitable. Chief Justice Roger Taney, writing for the majority in Scott, also concluded that people of African ancestry (whether free or a slave, including Scott) could never become "citizens" within the meaning of the Constitution, and hence lacked the ability to bring suit in federal court. Dred Scott Before the Civil War ended, Congress passed, and sent to the states for ratification, the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished "slavery" and "involuntary servitude" and authorized Congress to enact "appropriate legislation" implementing the abolition. The Amendment was understood to also make blacks citizens of the United States (overruling Dred Scott on that point).

The House vote to propose the Thirteenth Amendment followed the Senate vote, and barely made the 2/3 majority requirement. When the vote was announced the galleries cheered, congressmen embraced and wept, and Capitol cannons boomed a 100-gun salute. Congressmena George Julian of Indiana wrote in his diary, "I have felt, ever since the vote, as if I were in a new country." Ratification by the states quickly followed, and Secretary of State Seward proclaimed the Amendment adopted on December 18, 1865. Less than a year after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress used its newly conferred power to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, giving black citizens "the same right in every state...to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, ...to inherit, purchase, sell, and convey real and personal property; and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens." Supporters if the 1866 law argued that its guarantees constituted "appropriate" means of "enforcing" the right of blacks not to be held in bondage.

The Thirteenth Amendment, unlike most provisions in the Constitution, is self-executing, in that it directly reaches-even without action by Congress- conduct by private individuals (slave holders). Because of this fact, Congress's power under the Thirteenth Amendment allows it to punish forms of private conduct when it might not be able to do so under an amendment such as the Fourteenth, which restricts the conduct of states (prohibiting states from denying equal protection of the laws or due process). The Thirteenth Amendment has not produced nearly the volume of Supreme Court decisions as has the Fourteenth Amendment, or even the Fifteenth Amendment (guaranteeing the vote to black citizens). In 1916, in Butler v Perry, the Court rejected a challenge brought by a Florida man to a state law that required all able-bodied men between 21 and 45, when called to do so, to work for up to 60 hours on maintaining public roads. The plaintiff, convicted of failing to put in his time on the roads and sentenced to jail, argued that the law mandated "involuntary servitude" in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Justice McReynolds, writing for the Court, concluded "the term 'involuntary servitude' was intended to cover those forms of compulsory labor akin to African slavery which, in practical operation, would tend to produce like undesirable results." Jones vs Alfred H. Mayer Co. (1968) arose when the developer of a surburban St. Louis subdivision refused to sell Joseph Jones a home because he was black. Jones sued the developer, alleging a violation of the 1866 Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. 1982) which granted "all citizens of the United States...the same right as is enjoyed by white citizens...to purchase...real property." The Court rejected the developer's argument that Congress lacked the power under Section 2 of the 13th Amendment to ban private discrimination in housing. According to the Court in Jones, so long as Congress could rationally conclude that private discrimination in the housing market was "a badge of slavery," the statute should be upheld.

Finally, in Memphis v Greene (1981) the Court reversed a 6th Circuit ruling that the closing of a road separating an all-white neighborhood from a predominately black neighborhood constituted a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Court found that the modest inconvenience and speculative loss of property value to black residents was insufficient either to be considered "a badge of slavery" protected against by the Thirteenth Amendment, or a violation of the 1866 Civil Rights Act enacted under the power granted to Congress by Section 2 of the amendment. Four dissenting justices would have found the closing to violate the 1866 Act. 42 U.S.C. 1982: (1866 Civil Rights Act, which the Court found to be a constitutional exercise of Congress's power under Section 2 of the 13th Amendment--even as it reaches private discrimination): "All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property." Links Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Was the Civil War about slavery?

The short answer is "yes." One might consider, for example, Mississippi's 21-paragraph declaration of reasons in 1861 for leaving the Union. Only two paragraphs, one introductory and the other conclusory, did not mention slavery. The state's principal complaints concerned the refusal of free states to return fugitive slaves and opposition of the extension of slavery into the territories. The election of Abraham Lincoln, on an anti-slavery platform, obviously had a lot to do with the decisions of southern states to secede as well. The best evidence that "states' rights" was a secondary interest of the southern states is the Confederate Constitution which forced states to accept central authority on the issue of slavery and required all new territories in the Confederation to become slave states, regardless of the popular will of the people of the new state. Lincoln's Three Proposed Constitutional Amendments of 1862 1. Federal compensation provided for states agreeing to abolish slavery by January 1, 1900. 2. Frees slaves who "enjoyed actual freedom by the chances of war" before "the end of the rebellion." 3. Congress authorized to provide for colonization outside of the United States of free blacks by their own consent.

Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the Court's opnion in Scott v Sandford Questions 1. What does it tell us about constitutional interpretation when we observe that the seven justices in the majority in Scott v Sandford were from slave-holding southern states, and that the two diessenters were from northern states? 2. It is worth noting that Scott v Sandford was the only case in eight decades of pre-Civil War constitutional history in which the Supreme Court limited congressional power in any substantial way. What does it say about the Court's jurisprudence that the Court upheld the Fugitive Slave Act, finding it well within the powers of Congress? 3. Slavery laws have been applied to some private criminal enterprises, such as prostitution rings. When might states violate the Thirteenth Amendment? Butler suggests that mandatory work requirements are generally not violations, but what if state law required all able-bodied adults to pick cotton for 100 hours a year? If the same law applied only to African-Americans, it would undoubtedly violate the Equal Protection Clause--would it also violate the Thirteenth Amendment? 4. Would a real estate agency that steered potential black buyers away from white neighborhoods violate the Thirteenth Amendment?

The 1866 Civil Rights Act? 5 . The 13th Amendment is unique in that by its own words it applies to private individuals as well as government. How far does Section 2 of the 13th Amendment go in allowing Congress to reach forms of private discrimination? If discrimination in housing can be "a badge of slavery," might also discrimination in the membership policies of a private club? 6 . Supreme Court decisions subsequent to Jones pointedly avoid assuming that Congress has unlimited discretion to call any private conduct it chooses "a badge of slavery," and then regulate it. How should a court decide whether a particular form of private discrimination in reachable by Section 2 of the 13th Amendment? 7 Amendment XIII: Abolition of Slavery Share Abolition of Slavery Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Amendment XIII The Thirteenth Amendment was intended to complete the destruction of slavery begun by the U.S. government during the Civil War in its policy of military emancipation.

The official aim of the war was to preserve the Union and the Constitution against the attempt of eleven Southern states to secede from the Union by armed force. In an attempt to keep the peace and prevent further secession, Congress proposed a constitutional amendment on March 2, 1861, stating that the Constitution should never be amended to give Congress power to abolish or interfere with slavery within any state. Once the South had seceded, the status of slavery in the rebellious states was subject to change. Union policy recognized that emancipation of slaves employed in support of the rebellion was a legitimate war measure. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, signaled the transformation of an expedient military strategy into a settled executive policy for maintaining the freedom of slaves, emancipated by military means or through enforcement of confiscation and treason statutes enacted by Congress. On the assumption that slavery was a state rather than national institution, antislavery advocates at first anticipated that military defeat of the Confederacy would result in its abolition through amendment of state constitutions. The Emancipation Proclamation shifted the focus of antislavery strategy to the national government.

Lincoln's proclamation stated that "the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom" of emancipated slaves. The legal effect of the executive order on individual slaves was uncertain, however, and it was generally agreed that the proclamation did not repeal state constitutions and laws establishing slavery. To place slave emancipation on a secure constitutional footing, Congress proposed on January 31, 1865, to abolish slavery by constitutional amendment. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, including approval by reconstructed governments in the former Confederate states, was completed on December 6, 1865. The text of the Thirteenth Amendment reflects its historic character as the culmination of a movement that began during the American Revolution. Eschewing originality, the authors of the amendment relied on the language of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, intended to keep slavery from being taken into national territory, to abolish it in lands where it had been established for over two centuries. This demonstration of textual fidelity to historic antislavery purpose expressed the desire of Congress to complete the Founders' system of constitutional liberty by making the personal liberty of individuals the concern of the national government.

The Thirteenth Amendment was intended to establish a positive guarantee of personal liberty, expressed in the negative form of a proscription of slavery or involuntary servitude. Viewed in historical context and in the tradition of American political thought, the amendment is an affirmation of the idea that liberty, in the most fundamental sense, consists in the right of individuals not to be interfered with in the exercise of their natural rights. As a guarantee of personal liberty for all persons in the United States, the amendment established a minimum national standard of equality. The Thirteenth Amendment is libertarian in its nature and purpose, however, rather than egalitarian. The libertarian characteristic of the amendment was made clear in congressional debate in 1864. Congress rejected a more far-reaching proposal, which stated: "All persons are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as a slave; and the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this declaration into effect everywhere within the United States." By conferring power on Congress to enforce the prohibition of slavery throughout the United States, the Thirteenth Amendment altered the relationship between the states and the federal government.

State power to recognize or establish slavery as a legal institution was withdrawn; to that extent, at least, state authority to regulate the personal liberty and civil rights of individuals within their jurisdiction was restricted beyond the limits imposed by the original Constitution. Unlike most other parts of the Constitution, which are designed only to limit governmental action, enforcement of the Thirteenth Amendment is not limited by the requirement that it apply only to actions by states or state officials. The amendment establishes a rule of action for private individuals as well as for state governments. In the language of constitutional law, enforcement of the amendment is not limited by the requirement that the amendment's prohibitions apply only to state action. The U.S. Constitution, for the most part, does not apply to individuals except when they act under color of law (e.g., the policeman who searches your house). The Thirteenth Amendment is different because it applies to private individuals acting in their private capacities. A person violates the Thirteenth Amendment if he keeps a slave. Where the fundamental right of personal liberty is concerned, the distinction between public and private spheres, which otherwise serves as a limitation on government power in the United States, is not recognized under the Thirteenth Amendment.

In the view of its congressional framers, the comprehensive sweep of the abolition amendment was balanced by its libertarian purpose. The scope of the enforcement power delegated to Congress thus depends on the meaning of slavery and involuntary servitude. Explicit definition of these terms in the text of the Thirteenth Amendment was considered unnecessary because slavery was universally understood, and legally defined, as the right of a person to hold another human being as chattel. Slavery was appropriating the work of another person by irresistible power and not by his consent. In legislative debate there was disagreement over the anticipated force and effect of the prohibition of slavery. The most narrow interpretation of the amendment viewed it as conferring only an individual right not to be held as the property of another. Except for this limitation, states otherwise retained authority to regulate the civil rights of persons within their jurisdiction, and private individuals enjoyed freedom of association, including the right to discriminate as they pleased in commercial and social interactions. This ultra-restrictive view of the abolition amendment was challenged by its congressional authors. They believed that prohibition of slavery and involuntary servitude necessarily implied the conferral of basic civil rights reasonably required to exercise the right of personal liberty guaranteed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

Preeminent in their view were the rights to labor and enjoy the fruits thereof; to enter into marriage and establish family relationships; to make and enforce contracts; to bring suit and testify in court; and generally to receive the benefit of common-law protections of person and property. Content to rely on the Northwest Ordinance and reluctant further to engage the contentious issue of the effect of the abolition of slavery on the federal system, congressional authors refrained from writing specific civil rights guarantees into the text of the Thirteenth Amendment. A year later, faced with restrictive laws (the "Black Codes") enacted by reconstructed state governments regulating the status and rights of blacks within their jurisdictions, Congress enacted civil rights protections that it believed necessary to vindicate the right of personal liberty conferred by the Thirteenth Amendment. This legislative response forms an important part of the framing of the Amendment because it can be viewed as an authoritative congressional construction of the national government's enforcement power. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared that all persons born in the United States, except Indians not taxed, were citizens of the United States.

Regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, citizens had the same right to make and enforce contracts; to sue, be parties, and give evidence in court; to inherit, lease, or own property; and to have the full and equal benefit of all laws for the security of person and property as was enjoyed by white persons. The Civil Rights Act authorized the courts to protect persons denied the enumerated rights because of their race against anyone acting under color of state authority. The constitutional basis for national civil rights legislation of this magnitude was a matter of dispute. Many Members of Congress were convinced that the classification and unequal treatment of black citizens under state laws in the reconstructed South were an infringement of liberty and a badge of servitude subject to legislative correction by Congress under Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment. Other lawmakers, objecting to the "Black Codes," doubted that the abolition amendment gave Congress power to displace the states in civil rights matters and impose criminal sanctions on their officers in the manner of the Civil Rights Act. To supply any supposed defect in constitutional authority to legislate on civil rights under the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress therefore proposed a constitutional amendment that expressly authorized national legislation against state civil rights infringement.

Affirming the rule of citizenship adopted by the Civil Rights Act, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited states from abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving persons of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, or denying persons equal protection of the laws. Judicial and legislative construction has, in substantial measure, conformed to the original understanding of the Thirteenth Amendment. Slavery and involuntary servitude have been defined in personal libertarian terms with respect to conditions of enforced compulsory service, rather than in social egalitarian terms based on a subjective and metaphorical view of slavery that focuses on social and cultural systems of dominance and subordination. The most serious challenge to the Thirteenth Amendment was presented by labor arrangements in the post-Reconstruction South intended to restrict the mobility of black citizens. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court invalidated as forms of involuntary servitude state laws restricting employment and contract liberty and authorizing compulsory labor for indebtedness. Bailey v. State of Alabama (1911), United States v. Reynolds (1914), Taylor v. State of Georgia (1942), Pollock v. Williams (1944).

In a wide variety of cases concerning, among other things, military conscription, public work laws, discrimination in contracts, social security benefits, deportation of aliens, treatment of the criminally insane, labor union activities, and duties required of public school students, courts generally rejected claims of involuntary servitude in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. In these cases the judiciary addressed the question of the meaning and unaided force and effect of the prohibitions in Section 1 of the amendment. In a second line of cases, dealing with the enforcement power of Congress under Section 2, a broader interpretation appears that suggests a more social egalitarian view of the Thirteenth Amendment. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Supreme Court stated that Congress's enforcement authority under Section 2 extended to the "badges and incidents of slavery." However, the Court adopted a narrow view of this concept, rejecting a claim that exclusion of black citizens from privately operated places of public accommodation was a badge of slavery.

The Court declared that "compulsory service of the slave for the benefit of the master, restraint of his movements except by the master's will, disability to hold property, to make contracts, to have a standing in court, to be a witness against a white person, and such like burdens and incapacities, were the inseparable incidents of slavery." Through most of the twentieth century, the Thirteenth Amendment was not utilized to try to dismantle state-sponsored racial discrimination. Federal civil rights enforcement policy in the 1950s and 1960s was principally based on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In 1968, however, the Supreme Court approved a dramatic expansion of the meaning of the "badges and incidents" of slavery in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, Co. The Supreme Court decided that racial discrimination in the sale of housing, in the form of a property owner's refusal to sell to a Negro buyer, was a "relic of slavery" prohibited under the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Avoiding the requirements of the state-action doctrine under the Fourteenth Amendment, which made prohibition of private discrimination problematic, the Court relied on the antislavery amendment and permitted Congress to define for itself what the "badges and incidents" of slavery were. The Court declared: "Surely Congress has the power under the Thirteenth Amendment rationally to determine what are the badges and incidents of slavery, and the authority to translate that determination into effective legislation." The Court did not describe what limits Congress must observe in enforcing the amendment by "appropriate" legislation as required in Section 2. Again in Runyon v. McCrary (1976), the Court avoided the public/private distinction requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment legislation and held that exclusion of a black student from a private school was a denial of the right to make and enforce contracts guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment. On the other hand, in cases outside of Congress's Section 2 enforcement power, the Court was more careful to limit the "badges and incident of slavery" doctrine to its historical context.

For example, the Supreme Court found that a city's closing of its swimming pools, rather than operating them on a desegregated basis, was not a badge of slavery. Palmer v. Thompson (1971). In City of Memphis v. Greene (1981), the Court decided that the closing of a street in a white neighborhood, even if it had a disparate impact on blacks outside the neighborhood, was not a badge or incident of slavery in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. These cases indicate that Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment, unaided by legislation, does not reach the badges and incidents of slavery not directly associated with involuntary servitude. The most significant recent judicial exploration of the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment reaffirms a narrow definition of involuntary servitude under federal statutes. In United States v. Kozminski (1988), the Supreme Court unanimously decided that private employers of two mentally retarded men, forced to labor in squalid conditions, violated statutes based on the Thirteenth Amendment. Controversy in the Court focused on the criteria used to determine the existence of involuntary servitude.

The opinion of the Court stated that involuntary servitude is compulsory servitude by the use of physical restraint or injury, or by the use or threat of coercion through legal process. Disputing a concurring opinion, the majority declared that compulsion by psychological coercion is not involuntary servitude under the Thirteenth Amendment. Slavery and involuntary servitude in constitutional law retain the essential meaning intended by the framers of the Thirteenth Amendment, and congressional legislation under its enforcement clause remains limited. Since the reappearance of the Thirteenth Amendment in civil rights litigation in 1968, Congress has chosen not to enact any further legislation identifying and proscribing "badges and incidents of slavery." University of Maryland Further Reading Ronald D. Rotunda, Congressional Power to Restrict the Jurisdiction of the Lower Federal Courts and the Problem of School Busing, 64 Geo. L.J. 839 (1976) Herman Belz, A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedmen's Rights, 1861â€“1866 (2000) Sidney Buchanan, The Quest for Freedom: A Legal History of the Thirteenth Amendment, 12 Hous. L. Rev.

12 (1976) 1 Charles Fairman, Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864â€“1888 (1971) Robert L. Kohl, The Civil Rights Act of 1866, Its Hour Come Round at Last, Jones v. Alfred J. Mayer Co., 55 Va. L. Rev. 272 (1969) Earl M. Maltz, Civil Rights, the Constitution, and Congress, 1863â€“1869 (1990) Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001) Michael P. Zuckert, Completing the Constitution: The Thirteenth Amendment, 4 Const. Comment. 7 (1987) Case Law Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) Bailey v. State of Alabama, 219 U.S. 219 (1911) United States v. Reynolds, 235 U.S. 133 (1914) Taylor v.

State of Georgia, 315 U.S. 25 (1942) Pollock v. Williams, 322 U.S. 4 (1944) Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968) Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971) Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160 (1976) City of Memphis v. Greene, 451 U.S. 100 (1981) United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931 (1988) Thirteenth Amendment - Black History - HISTORY.com Thirteenth Amendment A+E Networks Introduction The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially abolished slavery in America, and was ratified on December 6, 1865, after the conclusion of the American Civil War.

The amendment states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Google Lincoln Issues Emancipation Proclamation When the American Civil War (1861-65) began, President Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) carefully framed the conflict as concerning the preservation of the Union rather than the abolition of slavery. Although he personally found the practice of slavery abhorrent, he knew that neither Northerners nor the residents of the border slave states would support abolition as a war aim. However, by mid-1862, as thousands of slaves fled to join the invading Northern armies, Lincoln was convinced that abolition had become a sound military strategy, as well as the morally correct path.

On September 22, soon after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland , he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation , declaring that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” While the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave (there were an estimated 800,000 slaves in border states and some 3 million more in Confederate states), it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom. Did You Know? President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, eight months before the 13th Amendment was officially adopted in December 1865. The 13th Amendment: Ratification The president and his fellow Republicans knew that the Emancipation Proclamation might be viewed as a temporary war measure and not outlaw slavery once the Civil War ended, so they focused on passing a constitutional amendment that would do so. The 13th Amendment was passed by the U.S.

Senate (which was dominated by Republicans) on April 8, 1864. However, the amendment died in the U.S. House of Representatives as Democrats rallied in the name of states’ rights. The presidential election of 1864 brought Lincoln back to the White Housealong withRepublican majorities in both legislative bodies. On January 31, 1865, the amendment passed in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 119 to 56, seven votes above the necessary two-thirds majority. Several Democrats abstained, but the 13th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification, which came on December 6, 1865. With the passage of the amendment, the “peculiar institution” that had indelibly shaped American history was eradicated. The groundbreaking series reimagined. ROOTS premieres Memorial Day at 9/8c on HISTORY. Tags

Question: Which amendment to the American Constitution abolished slavery?
Answer: THIRTEENTH